Asylum deportation flights need rights monitors, EU says
March 16, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The Guardian
The bigger picture on asylum
March 16, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The Gauardian
UK: Legacy cases and children
March 12, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
New Zimbabwe – MANY of the so called “legacy cases” are being resolved by the United Kingdom Border Agency. Figures published this week show that the UKBA is dealing with approximately 5,000 cases per month.
Not all of the cases are resulting in the granting of leave to remain, but the vast majority are being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK. (Please see previous posts on legacy cases).
With the granting of ILR comes a set of new challenges for many migrants living in the UK. Many people left Zimbabwe for political and economic reasons. It was difficult to travel as a family due to financial constraints or the uncertainty of life in the UK. As a result, many families were separated by the move to the diaspora in the early 2000’s.
The separation between parents and children has been heartbreaking for both parents and children. The purpose of this post is to highlight the difficulties that can be encountered in making an application for children to join their parents in the UK. It is not a straightforward issue.
The immigration rules in summary require that the applicant (child) meet the following criteria:
They must be under 18 years of age, and show that they cannot support themselves financially, are not married or in a civil partnership and are not living independently away from your parents.
A child cannot normally go to live in the UK if one parent is living abroad, unless the parent in the UK has sole responsibility for the child, or if there are special reasons why the child should be allowed to join the parent in the UK
Parents must live in the UK legally, with no time limit on their stay.
One parent is living and settled in the UK or is applying for settlement at the same time as applicant, and has had sole responsibility for looking after the applicant
Parents can support applicant without help from public funds
Parents have enough accommodation, which they own or live in, where you can live without help from public funds, and
The applicant is the child of those seeking to come to the UK.
The difficulties that may be faced by many parents will be that they may find it difficult to show that they can support their children without recourse to public funds. Many have been out of work for many years waiting for their cases to be resolved.
It is also difficult to obtain employment during this recession. It may, therefore, take several months for parents that have been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain to be reunited with their children.
The “sole responsibility” rule causes such applications to be very complex, as the meaning of the term cannot be precise. Every family’s situation is unique. For example, sole responsibility is not the same as legal custody, even though the question of who has legal custody will be a relevant consideration in deciding whether a parent has sole responsibility.
How is the term understood by the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) of the Home Office, and by courts and tribunals in the UK?
The parent based in the UK is known as the “sponsor” of the application and will be the motivating force behind it. The child overseas is known as the “applicant”.
To meet the sole responsibility requirement, it is necessary to satisfy the Home Office that the sponsoring parent has, usually for a substantial period of time, been the chief person exercising parental responsibility for the child. This means that the sponsoring parent has had and still has the ultimate responsibility for the major decisions relating to the child’s upbringing and provides the child with the majority of the financial and emotional support it requires.
The sponsoring parent must show that he or she has had, and continues to have, care and control of the child.
It has been accepted by the courts that many parents would find it impossible to establish literal or absolute “sole responsibility”, since in the majority of situations the other parent has at least some responsibility for their child’s upbringing. Moreover, there will be many situations in which the parents are separated and the sponsoring parent has left their child in the care of other relatives and gone to the UK without the child.
The Home Office instructions to BIA caseworkers, in the form of internal guidance, states that they expect that where the child is being looked after by relatives, they should be the relatives of the sponsor rather than of the child’s other parent. In such a case, the sponsoring parent must still show that she or he has retained the ultimate responsibility for the child’s upbringing and provides the majority of the emotional and financial support needed.
The guidance to BIA caseworkers suggests that an application should normally be refused where, for example, the child is being cared for by the father’s relatives but it is the mother who has applied for the child to join her in the UK.
The fatal failings of the UK asylum system
March 10, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The Guardian – Last weekend, three members of a family jumped together to their deaths from a Glasgow tower block. It’s said that they were Russians whose asylum claims had been rejected. However, most deaths among asylum seekers don’t make national news, as is made clear by a report compiled by Harmit Athwal for the Institute for Race Relations in 2006.
Driven to Desperate Measures catalogued the deaths of 213 asylum seekers, refugees and migrant workers who had been murdered in racist attacks or died in accidents since 1989; 57 had killed themselves, and – a little-known, appalling fact – nine of these had set themselves on fire, mostly in public places; and 11 died at their own hands in immigration detention centres or holding centres. But most of the suicides took place in the community, which can be a cold place for fugitives from horrors most of us will never have to face.
I rang Athwal to ask if there had been more suicides since her grim dossier came out. She opened a file and counted up to 39, although this, she said, wasn’t a comprehensive figure. She is the only person keeping count, getting details from asylum seeker and refugee networks, NGOs, charities, campaigners, social workers and local papers.
Minister attends immigration debate in Wakefield
March 9, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
UKBA – Stakeholders in Wakefield had the opportunity to discuss immigration matters with the Minister for Borders and Immigration, Phil Woolas, at a regional ‘immigration debate’ event last week.
The minister joined Jeremy Oppenheim, the UK Border Agency’s regional director for the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, for the question-and-answer session in Wakefield Town Hall. With them on the panel were Councillor Olivia Rowley, a Wakefield Council cabinet member and chair of the Regional Migration Partnership, and UK Border Agency deputy chief executive Jonathan Sedgwick.
200 Zimbabweans currently detained in UK
March 6, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The Zimbabwe Times – The British government is holding at least 209 Zimbabweans at its immigration centres and prisons, it was announced Thursday.
The figure was announced in the House of Lords after a question had been raised on the deportation of foreign nationals and the number of them currently held in detention centres and prisons in Britain.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office Lord Alan West of Spithead said the British government had announced in a written ministerial statement on October 29 last year that authorities were looking to normalising the returns policy to Zimbabwe progressively as and when the political situation developed.
According to latest HM Prison Service figures, as at December 18, 2009, there were 209 Zimbabwean nationals in prisons including those in the immigration removal centres, Dover, Haslar and Lindholme.
The 209 included those held on remand, serving custodial sentences or held under the Immigration Act 1971.
Immigration and asylum statistics released
March 2, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
UKBA – Quarterly statistics covering immigration and asylum were published by the Home Office today.
These statistics include asylum applications, total removals for those illegally in the UK and migration from eastern Europe for the period October to December 2009.
Figures show that applications for asylum have dropped in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 4,765 – a 30 per cent reduction compared to the same quarter in 2008, and the lowest level since the second quarter of 1992.
Decisions on asylum cases have also risen 36 per cent compared to the same quarter in 2008, with the grant rate for asylum falling to 13 per cent.
Huge rise in unresolved asylum cases revealed
February 26, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The Guardian – Labour’s record on tackling asylum faces a fresh onslaught today over figures that show a new backlog of 30,000 cases and a warning by the government’s immigration watchdog that its targets are currently “unachievable”.
John Vine also makes clear that a special five-year exercise which began in 2006 to clear the legacy of 450,000 unresolved asylum cases is now unlikely to meet its July 2011 target completion date. The setbacks mean that despite progress the Labour government will go into the general election campaign unable to claim that the asylum system has been fixed after John Reid famously declared the Home Office’s immigration directorate “unfit for purpose” in May 2006.
The report from Vine, his first on asylum as the UK Border Agency’s independent inspector, says there is no belief among frontline immigration staff that their official target of resolving 90% of new asylum applications within six months by the end of next year is achievable.
Rules change for foreign students to be debated
February 26, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Free Movement – The Lib Dems have tabled an objection to the latest Immigration Rules changes, covered earlier here on the blog. Under the ’scrutiny-lite’ negative resolution procedure by which the rules become law there will therefore, unusually, be a debate in Parliament on the new rules. Although on past form probably not until after they have taken effect.
I can only assume that the educational lobby is behind this, rather than any point of principle the Lib Dems have suddenly fixed on. As discussed earlier, universities are being very hard hit on two fronts right now. Central government is slashing direct funding, while UKBA has also slaughtered the cash cow that were foreign students. Part of the cut-backs to the numbers of foreign students is no doubt deliberate, but a lot of it also seems to be through accident and incompetence.
UK to ignore EU directive on Asylum Detentions
February 25, 2010 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The Guardian – Home Office ministers are to opt out of a European directive which lays down minimum standards for the treatment of asylum claims because it would mean abandoning a fast-track process that leads to hundreds of asylum seekers being detained every year.
The decision has been criticised by immigration lawyers and peers who believe the detention of asylum seekers at Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth removal centres “under the detained fast-track” procedure leads to rushed and unfair decisions because there is no time to gather evidence.
The fast-track asylum procedure was introduced in 2003 and involves immigration officers making an initial decision within two weeks while the asylum seeker is in detention.
